Background
Bernášková was born in Prague as the second of three daughters of painter Vojtěch Preissig.
Bernášková was born in Prague as the second of three daughters of painter Vojtěch Preissig.
She was the first Czechoslovakian woman sentenced to death and executed by Nazis. During World War I, the family resided in Boston, United States of America. Their villa in Boston became an important center of meetings of politicians and statesmen fighting for Czechoslovak independence. Personalities such as Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik visited their house.
Her parents did not approve of the marriage and her father even cut off all contact with her for four years.
The couple settled in a villa in the Spořilov area of Prague. During the Munich crisis mobilization, Bernášková volunteered as a Red Cross nurse and helped refugees from the occupied Czechoslovak border area.
During the occupation of Czechoslovakia by German troops she started to distribute leaflets and began collaborating with her father on publishing of the illegal magazine V boj ("Into Combat") in 1939. She also helped to organize illegal transfers across the border with Slovakia.
Although the Gestapo searched for her, she managed to avoid arrest and continued to publish the magazine.
She was arrested on 21 September 1940 in Prague, Poříčí Street, with false documents. During the interrogation, she tried to accept all the blame herself and saved a number of other resistance collaborators. Bernášková was the first Czechoslovakian woman convicted and sentenced to death by the Nazis.
She was sentenced on 5 March 1942, and then guillotined at the end of August 1942 in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin.
In 1998 she was posthumously awarded the Medal for Heroism by President Václav Havel.